


i can feel your anger from way across the sea

by gendernoncompliant



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Coming Out, F/M, Flashbacks, Homophobia, Idiots in Love, Love Letters, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Postcards, Pre-Series, Trans Character, Transphobia, and that's the only headcanon that matters, big sad, childhood best friends, disaster bisexuals, heavy on the hurt-light on the comfort, life-long pining, pre-series but duke still has the s4 ponytail bc he always has the s4 ponytail, queer in a small town, slow burn it to the ground, spoilers for how Nathan's trouble was triggered, trans man Nathan, wrong-place-wrong-time kind of romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 12:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21036320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendernoncompliant/pseuds/gendernoncompliant
Summary: Twenty years down the line, it’s hard for Nathan to say if the thing that first drew him to Duke was Duke himself, or how angry it made Garland to see Nathan with him. It doesn’t really matter, in the end. He was drawn into Duke’s orbit, regardless. Once Nathan got to know him, something about him was—electric, almost. Duke was the only thing in this sleepy, nowhere town that made him feel awake. Alive.These days, he just makes him feel sick.





	i can feel your anger from way across the sea

**Author's Note:**

> A HUGE thank you to my darling @crownedcarl, who helped me build the AU this concept is based in and who introduced the idea of Duke sending postcards, which then sent me onto a very long, very sad tangent that became this fic.
> 
> It’s worth mentioning—re: the trans Nathan tag—that I am a trans person. I’m not perfect and my experiences (obviously) don’t reflect the entire community, but I want it to be known that all of the trans content in the fic comes from a genuine place. I want to see myself and my community reflected in the media I love. Nathan has struck me as trans from the very first episode and getting to explore ways that that could inform his character and his backstory has been an absolute joy.  
This fic leans pretty heavy into the angst, but being trans and queer are joyful, beautiful things, and I hope that—in the end—I’ve portrayed Nathan as a triumph and not a tragedy.
> 
> **The title is lyrics from “Sky Full of Song” by Florence + The Machine, which is an absolute Duke/Nathan jam, honestly.

* * *

Nathan can’t say that he really expected Garland Wuornos to make it easy on him when he joined the force. It’s not as though his dad ever went easy on him when he was _just_ his dad; god forbid he give him a break now that he’s also his _boss_. Still, after another week of being buried under half-finished paperwork and a handful of unbearably frustrating house calls (most of them involving Hank Windsor, a local farmer just a few steps into senility, who seems absolutely convinced that the deer-induced crop damage he’s been seeing is the handiwork of his neighbor’s teenaged son), Nathan’s exhausted. It’s a bone-deep kind of thing that goes further than the persistent ache in his shoulders.

Nathan never exactly had delusions of grandeur over what it would be like to work the beat in a small town, but it seems cosmically unfair that he could be this worn out _and_ this bored at the same time. And maybe a part of him had thought that Garland would be proud of him—following in his footsteps and all. But the Chief is just as surly and unfriendly as ever.

Nathan’s so goddamn tired of feeling like he has something to prove.

When he pulls open his mailbox on his way into his apartment, he’s met with an unwelcome sight. At the top of the pile: a hyper-colored vista printed on the front of a cheesy, generic postcard—the words **_VACATION IN PARADISE_** branded across the top. It’s the absolute last thing he needs, today.

“Fuck off, Duke,” he says to no one, grabbing the stack and slamming the mailbox shut with a metallic crash.

The postcard sits, untouched, on his kitchen counter for a good week and a half.

* * *

The very first postcard showed up a few months after Duke left. Nathan thought it was an ad for some kind of time-share scam, at first—flipped the thing over without any real interest only to find Duke’s handwriting staring back. It was unreal, that first time, just how much a single piece of paper was able to yank the rug out from underneath him. All it said was:

_ The food here sucks.  
Love, Duke. _

Nathan wasn’t sure if it was the absolutely unabashed casualness of the statement or the blatantly sarcastic “_love_” that got under his skin the most. Every ugly, buried feeling he’d spent the last few months pretending didn’t exist bubbled up to the surface all at once. He didn’t know if he wanted to scream or cry or _strangle_ Duke. Worse, some distant part of him felt so—

Glad. Just to hear from him.

He hated that.

Nathan had dropped it in a drawer with the rest of the mail too irrelevant to look at but too important to throw away. If anyone had asked him why he kept it, he probably wouldn’t have had an answer.

(He kept all of them.)

* * *

Nathan has never really been sure when Duke crossed the line from enemy to friend—probably because he spent most of his life with one foot on both sides of it. Twenty years down the line, it’s hard for Nathan to say if the thing that first drew him to Duke was Duke himself, or how angry it made Garland to see Nathan with him. It doesn’t really matter, in the end. He was drawn into Duke’s orbit, regardless. Once Nathan got to know him, something about him was—electric, almost. Duke was the only thing in this sleepy, nowhere town that made him feel awake. Alive.

These days, he just makes him feel sick.

The postcard—**_VACATION IN PARADISE_**\--sits untouched for weeks, because Nathan’s too exhausted to actually look at it. He can’t stand the idea of another useless platitude—wish you were here, weather’s gorgeous, love Duke, love Duke, love Duke. None of it means anything when Duke was never here for the things that mattered. Where was he when Nathan graduated college? Got into the Academy? Joined Haven PD? Where was he when he started HRT or got top surgery? When he got his heart broken? What fucking good is a postcard?

The photo on the front of the card—a too-green field with a too-clean fence surrounded by an absolutely picturesque stretch of pine trees—stares up at him every time he walks through the kitchen and he pretends it doesn’t matter.

Eventually, some damned combination of curiosity and nostalgia gets the better of him and he bites the bullet and flips it over. The message makes his breath catch in his throat.

_ This whole fucking country reminds me of you.  
Love, Duke. _

Nathan dumps it in the trash only to dig it back out four hours later. He’s angry all goddamn night.

* * *

Duke told him once, before he left, that he thought Nathan was brave. He laughed in Duke’s face.

Things weren’t good between them, then. Their friendship had shattered a little, midway through high school. It wasn’t any one thing that wrecked it, they just fought more and laughed less. Duke got distant; he started selling bootleg booze under the bleachers and hanging out with the kinds of people who made Nathan uncomfortable. Although, just about everyone made Nathan uncomfortable, in those days. Uncomfortable was sort of his default.

For a while, the only interactions they had were when Duke found some new, stupid prank to pull on him in the hallways. Nathan learned to hate the smug, wild-eyed grin Duke turned on him. 

It was a look he used to—well. Not _love_. Not that.

But even though the two of them hadn’t shared a kind word in months, Nathan came outside with the trash one night to find Duke sitting on the trunk of his car—this rusted out, ancient crown vic his dad had given him before he got the Bronco.

“Hey,” he’d barked, expecting another prank, some kind of angle, “You’re gonna dent it.”

Duke huffed a sound close to a laugh and blew a lock of hair out of his face. “Please, this hunk of junk’s got way bigger problems than my ass.”

Nathan only turned his back on him long enough to dump the trash into the bin before heading back to him, crossing his arms and looking him up and down. “What are you doing in my driveway, Duke.” The words landed too flat to be a question. More like an accusation.

It was only when Duke looked up at him again that Nathan saw the purpling bruise around his eye. It looked bad: swollen and dark, spreading down from his brow and onto his cheekbone. In the dim yellow of the streetlamp it was hard to tell, but Nathan thought he saw red in the white of Duke’s eye.

This close, he could smell the sterile tang of alcohol—vodka maybe. Duke reeked of it. In the moment, Nathan had decided he didn’t care enough to ask where Duke had gotten it from. In retrospect, maybe he should have.

Duke was still looking at him and the silence dragged on so long that Nathan started to wilt under the attention. He tucked his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels, only holding Duke’s gaze because it felt like he couldn’t look away. Like it was some kind of contest that he wasn’t willing to lose.

It felt like an eternity before Duke croaked out a quiet, “I wish I was as brave as you.”

Nathan’s laugh broke the spell: sliced through the evening like a lightning bolt. Duke immediately turned his face away, staring down at the concrete instead. It hid the black eye in a way that Nathan wasn’t sure was purposeful.

“Don’t be stupid,” Nathan barked. Duke seemed—hurt, maybe.

“Yeah,” Duke had said, his voice thick with something that Nathan wouldn’t have dared call disappointment. “Don’t know what I was thinking.” He hopped down off of Nathan’s car, hands shoved in his pockets, halfway down the driveway before Nathan could blink.

“Hey!” Nathan called after him, but Duke didn’t turn around. “The hell were you _doing_ here, Duke?”

“No fuckin’ idea,” Duke drawled back, stumbling just a little on the curb and disappearing into the dark.

Two years later—after they’d patched their friendship together and fallen back into something familiar and comfortable—Duke finally told him the full story of what had happened that night: how he’d driven out to Bangor and used an incredibly unconvincing fake ID to get into some shady dive bar. How he’d met a man who would have been twenty years too old for him, anyway. How they’d talked, laughed. How Duke got daring and leaned in close and ran a hand up the man’s thigh. How he’d wound up on his back, on the floor, staring at the ceiling—seeing double.

The man had kicked him and kept kicking him, but Nathan hadn’t seen _those_ bruises. The bartender had to drag the guy off him. When Duke told the story, he didn’t use the word _scared_. He didn’t have to.

For whatever reason, when it was over—when the fear and the pain sank to a dull roar quiet enough for him to drive back home—the only person Duke (drunk as he was) had wanted to see was Nathan. Nathan never quite knew what to do with that information.

He knew one thing, though. Duke didn’t go near another man for years.

* * *

Nathan has a box, now, that he keeps the postcards in. It’s better than having to look at them on his counter, but worse—somehow—to have this designated place for them. Like they actually belong in his life and not in some landfill. When he opens it up to drop the latest in, it strikes him just how _many_ there are. Years of them. Every one of them has been meticulously placed, letter-side down, all so he doesn’t have to risk accidentally reading one when he opens it.

Nathan’s never been the nostalgic type. Nothing worth reminiscing about, anyway.

This one, though—the picture causes the same kind of nerve-grating nausea as the caption. He looks at the long line of the wooden fence and wonders what it is about it that makes Duke think of him, all these years later. He wonders if he reminds Duke of oak trees the same way Duke reminds him of the sea.

Burying it at the bottom of the pile seems childish, when it’s done, but it does make him feel better.

* * *

Nathan came out the summer before high school. Duke used to joke it was the worst possible timing, but honestly there would never have been a good time. Not in Haven.

Duke was the first—the only, for a while—person who made him feel normal. He was the first person Nathan told.

“So… what do I call you, now?” Duke had asked, after a silence that must have only been a few seconds but felt like a lifetime for him.

“I—what?” Nathan (not-Nathan, then, but soon to be) asked, dazed by the response. He’d expected disgust, confusion.

Duke had flashed him a smile—a small, awkward, gentle thing. “Uh, I don’t know, dude. Emily’s just kind of a weird name for a guy. I mean, you do you. Chase your bliss or whatever.”

“Oh,” Nathan said, deflating with something like relief into the passenger seat of Duke’s car and staring out the windshield. “I, uh, I’ve been thinking about, um. Maybe Nathan?”

“Nathan,” Duke articulated, testing it out, and Nathan tried to pretend it didn’t send an electric kind of thrill up his spine to hear him say it. Duke cracked a playful little smile. “Really? Any name you want, and you pick _Nathan_?”

Delight bloomed bright and shocking in his chest. He laughed and shoved Duke’s shoulder. “Fuck off, _Duke_.”

Duke let out a startled little bark of laughter and ruffled Nathan’s hair before shoving his head away. “Screw you, _Wuornos_. My name’s badass.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Nathan taunted, eyes bright. He was grinning from ear to ear. “Makes you sound like somebody’s doberman.”

“I—am gonna take that as a compliment, you little shit.” Duke lunged forward to dig his knuckles into the space between his ribs and Nathan made a noise caught between a yelp and a laugh.

“It’s _not_ a compliment,” he crowed, batting Duke’s hands away. All the anxiety he’d walked into this conversation with had melted out of him, like it was never there at all. Somewhere along the line, Duke Crocker had started to feel like a safe place, and he lived up to that in spades.

They sat in giggly quiet for a few moments, laughter dissolving like champagne bubbles in the emptiness of the cab, before Duke piped back up with a gentle, “You know what. It suits you.”

Nathan bit down on a smile, staring at his hands in his lap. “Thanks.”

Duke never—not once—called him Emily again, after that. It’s more than Nathan can say for most of his friends. More than he can say for his dad.

Garland insisted it was a phase; he threw out all of Nathan’s “tomboy” clothes to discourage it. Much to the Chief’s immense unhappiness, Duke just showed up with a plastic bag full of his own flannels he’d grown out of as a replacement. After that, Garland tried grounding Nathan, but Duke got so good at sneaking him out that it didn’t really take.

His dad came around, eventually, but Garland and Duke never buried the hatchet.

* * *

It’s more than ten months before another postcard comes in. Nathan’s finally starting to get some respect at the station. Garland is still Garland, but he’s lightened up a little. Nathan finally feels like he’s got his feet underneath him. He’s busy enough, maybe even _happy_ enough, that he forgets about the shoe box full of postcards for weeks at a time.

Nothing ever happens in Haven. Life as a small-town cop isn’t the adrenaline-fueled nightmare it must be in a place like Boston. Once upon a time, Nathan found living here boring, but these days he’s grateful for the quiet, inconsequential calls.

It’s the kind of life Duke would have hated.

The fact that he thinks about Duke at all is its own kind of setback.

He doesn’t feel that same rush of panic when he opens his mailbox anymore. Not after ten months of silence. Finally, checking the mail is just like everything else in Haven: simple and uneventful.

Except there’s a corner of a postcard sticking out from the middle of the stack. Nathan’s heart drops into his stomach. He forces himself not to look at it: to take it inside into the quiet of his apartment and deal with it there, but even the fifteen feet to his front door feels like an eternity.

Nathan hates the hopeful flutter in his stomach that flashes to life when he sees that this one is from state-side. California. Closest Duke’s been in—damn near seven years. It shouldn’t steal the breath from him, like that, shouldn’t make his heart stutter in his chest. It’s the longest one he’s ever gotten, and Nathan reads it half a dozen times before the words really sink in.

_I’m guessing you’re not reading these, anyway, so it doesn’t really matter what I say._   
_ Might as well be honest._   
_ I’m scared, Nate. I want to come home. (Fuck, can you believe I still call it that?)_   
_ Thing is, I don’t think anybody or anything is waiting for me, back there._   
_ Including you._   
_ And I think it’s my own fault._   
_ Apologies don’t cut it. Not after seven years._   
_ I know you’re mad at me. I don’t think I can fix it._   
_ Love, Duke._

Nathan has no reason to believe that the number he has saved in his phone as Duke’s still goes to fucking anything. It’s not disconnected, but seven years deep and Nathan’s never gotten more than a voicemail. He’s left his fair share of messages, over the years—usually drunk. Usually angry, but not always. There was a stretch in the middle there where it had been kind of comforting to just talk into the void.

He used to call and tell Duke’s voicemail about all the shit he didn’t know how to tell anyone else. He told him about dating a guy for the first time, back in college, and about how weird it was being somewhere other than Haven. He complained about the hurdles he had to jump through for his top surgery and the weird side-effects he was seeing on HRT.

It’s not like he could talk to the Chief about it. Garland got better with the whole thing, over time, but specifics still made him uncomfortable. He liked to just bury his head in the sand and pretend Nathan had always been Nathan and, honestly? Nathan liked it better that way, too.

He knows, now, that Duke is never going to hear any message he ever leaves, and that just makes him bolder.

** _You’ve reached Duke. Don’t leave a message._ **

“OF COURSE I’M MAD AT YOU, _YOU SELFISH PRICK_,” he shouts. He paces, he practically crawls out of his own goddamn skin. “Is this a _joke_? You’re a coward. If you actually gave a shit about me, you’d answer your fucking phone. I’m done. Lose my address.” He nearly hangs up, only to put the phone back to his ear and snarl. “Fuck you, Duke. I hope your boat fucking sinks.”

He spends the next half hour pacing circles around the living room.

Calling didn’t make him feel better. Screaming didn’t make him feel better, either. At this point, he doesn’t even think having Duke home would make him feel any better.

He’s caught in an ugly thing and he just has to sit in it.

* * *

The Reverend never used words like “_trans gender_” or “_queer_.” He had a penchant for grander terms—sinners, abominations, freaks. When he forbade Hannah from going to prom with Nathan, he’d called him _ one of them _. Nathan wasn’t as insulted as he probably should have been, not after years of the Reverend’s abuse. And not when he was so goddamn enamored with Hannah.

High school had been a mess. Not everyone was a bully, but almost no one was much of an ally. Just Duke, and even he was in and out (albeit for unrelated reasons.) Some of his old friends had been okay, but they sort of skirted around him. Walked on eggshells. Didn’t know what to say.

Hannah was different. She treated him like Duke did. She made him feel wanted and normal and, honestly, the high from that was so intense that he couldn’t give two shits what her father had to say about him.

He didn’t feel quite so cavalier, anymore, when the Rev found them tangled together in the backseat of Nathan’s car.

It had all happened at once. One second, Hannah was warm and sweet on top of him—kissing him dizzy, undoing his zipper, slipping her hand underneath the waistband of his boxers and grinning when he moaned into her mouth. The next, she made a panicked, startled noise and jolted back so hard and fast that she hit her head on the roof. The split second after that, the car door was yanked open behind him.

The Rev dragged him out of the backseat. He remembers stumbling over the pavement, kept upright only by the Rev’s hands fisted in his shirt. He remembers how the man’s breath reeked of booze, and how he was so close, his screaming face eclipsed everything else.

It all moved so fast that the details of what the Rev said bounced off him, but words like _filthy_ and _monstrosity_ and _vile_—those stuck. And the terror of that man screaming in his face, shoving him onto the grass, spitting on him—he never forgot that.

Hannah had been crying, babbling apologies while her father dragged her by the arm to his car. They drove off and he was alone, but he couldn’t bring himself to stand. He’d sat in the dirt shaking like a leaf for what must have been ages. 

When another pair of headlights fell on him, Nathan leapt to his feet with all the grace of a baby deer. He stumbled for his car, frantic to get the door open, but a familiar voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Hey, hey—Nate, it’s just me. It’s all good.” Duke stepped out of the driver’s side, hands up in surrender.

Nathan was too skittish and confused to be relieved. “Duke?” He asked. He remembers hating how fragile his voice sounded. “How did you—”

Duke wasn’t careful or cautious with him in the slightest, which was oddly comforting, actually. Normal. “Uh, Hannah called. Which was kind of wild. She said the Rev roughed you up?”

“Not really,” Nathan said, all but stammering over the words. “Just—yelled.”

He must not have been very convincing, because Duke still looked him over for bruises, like he didn’t quite believe it. Satisfied that Nathan seemed no worse for wear, he’d leaned up against Nathan’s junker of a car and pulled out an almost certainly stolen pack of cigarettes.

Cigarette smoke just reminded Nathan of Garland, and he and Garland weren’t exactly in a good place right then. Not that they ever were.

Nathan hadn’t thought he’d been staring, but Duke must have picked up on _something_, because he tucked the pack back into his pocket without ever lighting one up.

After a moment of less than easy quiet, Duke elbowed him and teased, “So—Hannah Driscoll, huh? You two hook up?” He glanced down and, a little bashfully added, “Your, uh, fly’s open, big guy.”

The vague heat of embarrassment was almost enough to distract him from the sting of how badly the night had actually gone. He zipped back up, looking anywhere but at Duke. He couldn’t quite keep the disappointment from his voice when he sighed, “Probably never will again. Not if the Rev has anything to say about it.”

He hadn’t known what to make of the quiet way Duke had looked at him then. Knew even less how to handle the gentleness in how Duke had said, “I’m sorry, man. I know you really liked her.”

“I do,” had felt like a pathetic thing to say, in the moment. Like a surrender.

Duke, to his credit, didn’t let him linger in it. He pushed off the ancient crown vic and tugged Nathan behind him by the sleeve of his shirt. “Come on,” he said, “forget your shitty, hand-me-down cop car and come with me.” Duke was already in the driver’s side when he popped his head out the window and called “Hey, go get your _keys__,_ asshole. Engine’s still running.”

They drove down the coast, Duke blasting music loud enough that Nathan didn’t have room to think. He parked the car out on the edge of a secluded beach--not the kind of place tourists went to. Not the kind of place _anyone _went to, that time of night.

Exasperated and, honestly, more tired than sad at this point, Nathan groaned, “The beach? Seriously? Aren’t you sick of the beach?”

Duke was unfazed by his irritation. He grinned at him in that wild-eyed way that Nathan was learning to love again and teased, “Actually, the beach is the only thing about this place I _don't_ get sick of. Look at this, Nate! You’ve got—the motherfucking _ocean_. You’ve got—my, absolutely stunning, company. And _we've_ got—a metric fuckton of weed.” Duke dangled a jar of it in front of him and Nathan laughed in a way that was shocked and genuine.

Duke rolled them a couple joints and they hot-boxed in the car until Nathan felt like he was floating. Everything else that had happened that night was a world away. The only thing that mattered was the pretty boy in the driver’s seat and how his laugh filled a hole in Nathan’s chest that he hadn’t even realized was empty.

They were both laughing, tipped so close together that Nathan was practically cross-eyed trying to look at him. Duke had a joint in one hand and Nathan’s knee in the other and his skin felt hot through the denim of his jeans.

Duke leaned across him to put out the joint in the old car’s ashtray and he had been absolutely positive that Duke was going to kiss him. Duke’s mouth almost (almost) brushed against his cheek when, instead, he whispered, “Let’s go swimming.”

Duke tumbled out of the car like a spilled drink.

“_Come on!_” He crowed, peeling out of his clothes in his mad dash to the water: jacket, shirt, pants all left like a trail of breadcrumbs behind him.

“Hey!” Nathan called after him, clumsy when his feet sank into the sand with each step. Duke was almost all the way to the water, already. “I don’t have a bathing suit!”

“_SO FUCKIN’ WHAT!_” Duke cheered, spinning around to look at him, grinning so big it made Nathan’s chest ache. And then he yanked off his underwear and threw it higher ashore and Nathan’s gaze snapped to the relative safety of _anywhere else_.

Nathan wasn’t nearly stoned enough to forget how he looked underneath the flannels and the double-stacked sports bras and the baggy jeans. He was stoned enough not to be angry about it, though. He stumbled his way to where the surf came in. Duke was already knee-deep in the water and Nathan was making a very concentrated effort not to look below the waist. By the time he got to the shoreline, Duke was chest deep in the waves and Nathan was still entirely clothed.

It was like Duke knew without him having to say anything; he turned a smile on him that was gentle and bright when he promised, “It’s just me.” The easy camaraderie of it made Nathan’s throat feel tight. He felt pulled toward the water—toward Duke—like some kind of gravitational force he couldn’t escape, but his feet stayed rooted in the sand.

Duke broke the spell, splashing a wave of water Nathan’s direction and cheering, “Get your clothes soaked, for all I care, just get _in_ here.” Technically, they were Duke’s clothes, anyway.

Nathan felt like he couldn’t breathe; it wasn’t a suffocating thing—more like a bottomless, terrified joy that lit him up from the inside. He wanted to brave. Duke called him that once. And he felt like he had something to prove: that he wasn’t ashamed, that he wasn’t afraid.

It was Duke. Nobody in the world he could trust more.

“Fuck it.”

Duke had cheered and laughed as Nathan tossed his clothes into the sand. Losing his pants was somehow less nerve-wracking than the next part. He forced himself not to turn his back, even though his hands caught on the elastic of the two too-tight sports bras binding his chest. One deep breath, two, three, and then he peeled out of them and dropped them with the rest and ran into the water.

“_That's_ my boy!” Duke had crowed in absolute delight.

In retrospect, Nathan doubts Duke had any idea how much those three words meant to him at the time, in more ways than one. Duke was just talking. Duke was always just talking.

It was cold. Nathan remembers that the most. He’d screamed and Duke cackled and splashed him, and he splashed back. They spent hours under the stars, letting the waves break against them. He’d felt a thousand miles away from the version of himself the Reverend shoved into the dirt—like it hadn’t been hours, but years.

Duke drove him home, after. It was the early hours of the morning and he smelled like weed and saltwater. Garland had all but read him his Miranda Rights when he stumbled through the front door, but it didn’t matter.

“That Crocker kid is gonna ruin your goddamn life,” his dad had barked. Nathan laughed so hard it brought tears to his eyes.

* * *

Nathan does _not_ move because of the postcards. That’s what he keeps reminding himself. He moves because a place opened up closer to downtown and it made more sense to live there. And if he _forgot_ to leave a forwarding address behind, when he went? Well, these things happen.

He spends months telling himself that he’s better off, that he doesn’t care about the postcards or whether they’re still showing up in his old mailbox—that it doesn’t matter anyway because the new resident is probably throwing them away. It doesn’t matter.

Trying to convince himself turns out to be an exercise in futility when he winds up on a stranger’s doorstep to ask if there’s any chance she’s been collecting his mail.

“Oh!” She says, surprised. She has a kind face, a calm presence. “You must be Nathan.” He almost regrets intruding on her for this. For a handful of old bills and—Duke fucking Crocker.

“Yes, ma’am.” He nods. “That’s me.” Discomfort starts creeping in along the edges. He’s better off not knowing. He can’t decide what would be worse—if there were postcards or if there weren’t.

“Wait right here,” she says, before disappearing into the apartment. Nathan briefly entertains the idea of getting back into his car and driving away. Can’t read the postcards if he never gets them. She’s back before he can do it, though, pressing a stack of papers into his hands.

She looks a little embarrassed when she says, “I—um. I didn’t mean to pry, but—postcards aren’t… well it’s not like I _opened_ them. I’m—I’m so sorry.”

His face feels hot and he stares down at the letters in his hand instead of at her. “That’s, uh. That’s alright. I get it. It’s fine.” He turns to leave, but her voice stops him in his tracks.

“It sounds like somebody really loves you.”

His throat goes tight. “Thank you,” he says, a little brusque, and hurries down her driveway and out of her life. He leaves a forwarding address with the front office, this time.

* * *

Duke knocked on his window in the middle of the night just a few weeks after high school graduation. Nathan had felt aimless since school ended. All year he’d been “college hunting,” but he’d never actually mailed any of his applications. For all his big talk about ditching this town, he was terrified to actually leave it. And Duke wasn’t planning on going to college at all; he’d made that abundantly clear.

Leaving Haven meant leaving Duke. Nathan didn’t know how to do that.

Which only made the sting twice as sharp when Duke scrambled through his bedroom window at two in the morning and told him, “I’m getting out of here.”

Nathan just stared at him. “You’re—you’re what?”

“I’m leaving, Nate,” Duke insisted, his voice dialed down to a manic whisper. Garland’s room was right next door and waking him up would have ruined everything. He reached out and took Nathan’s hands in his own like it was second nature, like it was just something they did. Nathan still remembers how tight Duke had gripped his fingers when he pleaded, “Come with me.”

Fear was always a powerful motivator for Nathan.

He yanked his hands out of Duke’s grip, staring in shock when he hissed, “What? _No_, what are you talking about? Where are you _going?_”

“It doesn’t matter. Anywhere. Anywhere but here. I don’t wanna go without you. What have you got here that’s worth keeping? Just—come with me.” Duke grabbed him again, his wrists this time, as though he could soothe Nathan like some kind of nervous animal, like he could placate him into agreeing. It almost worked.

Nathan met Duke’s wild-eyed stare with one of his own, like a deer in headlights. His heart was beating so fast, it felt like it might put a hole through his chest. “I can’t,” he gasped, unable to pull away and unwilling to be dragged any closer. “No, Duke, I _can't_.”

“Why?”

“I don’t—this is my _life_—”

“WHAT is?” Duke let go of him of his own accord and Nathan tried not to let it show on his face how much that stung. “What, exactly, about this place is home, to you? Everyone at school treats you like shit. The Rev never did you any favors. And the Chief? Fuck the Chief.”

“He’s _trying_,” Nathan pushed back, starling himself with how quickly he jumped to defend him.

“Yeah?” Duke hisses, just a little cruel, “How hard?” Nathan recoiled from him and Duke softened almost immediately, trying to bridge the gap between them that all at once felt a thousand feet wide. “Nate,” he murmured, reaching out a third time and catching the hem of Nathan’s shirt—_Duke's_ shirt. He felt sick. “You’re better than this bullshit, backwater town. We don’t have to answer to them, anymore. Please.”

_Please._ Nathan stepped back, out of arm’s reach, because he couldn’t think straight with Duke so close to him. Never could, if he was being honest with himself. He held his hands up like a barrier between them, a warning for Duke not to try and touch him again.

“I’m not going with you,” he said, voice firm and final, eyes locked on the floor between them.

When he finally looked up, he caught just a split second of the gutted expression on Duke’s face before he’d had time to replace it with rage.

Duke either forgot to keep his volume in check or decided he didn’t care when he snarled, “This town is gonna eat you alive.”

“Hasn’t killed me yet,” Nathan leveled back with the same kind of patented Wuornos bullheadedness he hated in his father. Duke made a furious sound and whipped around to leave.

He came to a stop with one leg slung through the window. “You’re gonna wish you listened to me,” he snapped, something raw to his voice that Nathan hadn’t wanted to think about. He pointed a finger at Nathan and swore, “I’m gonna be a million miles away on some island paradise and you’re gonna _wish _you’d come with me. And I won’t even _think _about you.” He ducked through the window after that, dropping onto the lawn.

_“GOOD,”_ Nathan screamed after him, just before he slammed the window shut. “I HOPE YOU NEVER THINK ABOUT ME AGAIN.”

* * *

**EIGHT MONTHS’ WORTH OF MISSED POSTCARDS:**

_ I can’t stop thinking about you.  
Love, Duke. _

_ I got all your messages.  
Love, Duke. _

_ I’m sorry.  
Love, Duke. _

_ You were the best thing about that place.  
Love, Duke. _

_ Please, stop calling me. I can’t.  
Love, Duke. _

_You get to drunk dial me, so I’m drunk writing-you-a-letter._   
_ I’m so fucking proud of you. There, I said it._   
_ Love (do you get it yet?), Duke._

_ Disregard last letter. Lapse of judgement.  
<strike>Love</strike> Love, Duke. _

_I’ve always been a coward._   
_ Don’t know why it took you so long to notice._   
_ Love, Duke._

_ You deserve to be happy and I think I keep fucking that up.  
Love, Duke. _

* * *

It’s not like Duke left a contact number, when he left.

No, that had come about a year in, after the first few postcards, scrawled on the back of a generic “wish you were here” tropical locale alongside the words _if you ever need anything._

Nathan had put off calling for months out of sheer stubbornness and fury. He _didn't_ need anything. He didn’t need Duke fucking Crocker, that was for sure.

He really_ didn't_ need Duke when he left for college—left the strange, little petri dish of their hometown and stepped into the big, bright world outside of it. It was the first place he’d ever been where no one knew him as Emily. He still got _ma’am_ed from time to time, but it was nothing compared to the uphill battle of coming out late in a small town. It was the first time in his life he felt like he got to walk out the door like himself and be _seen_ as himself.

(Duke had always made him feel that way, too, but Duke was off who the fuck knew where and how he did or didn’t make Nathan feel didn’t make any goddamn difference, anymore.)

College felt almost surreal, in that way. It was this other world where he got to be the man he wanted to be. It made coming home for the holidays feel like a bucket of ice water, in comparison.

First thing the Chief said when he pulled up to the house—after a gruff and not particularly tender hello—was a grumbled, “Emily, get your ass over here and help me get these bags out of the trunk.”

Nathan’s whole body went stiff. 

“Who’s Emily?” He asked as he hauled a suitcase from the trunk, voice sharper than he meant for it to be.

The Chief sighed and waved a hand. “Oh, you know what I mean. Nathan.” He might have muttered an apology, but it was so quiet, Nathan barely heard it.

He could handle his dad. The Chief was clumsy around the subject, and he didn’t always try as hard as Nathan wanted him to. (Duke had always considered that part the most unforgivable. Duke and Garland never got along _before_ Nathan transitioned, but they _really _didn’t get along after. “The best part,” Duke told him one night, grinning with an absolutely fiendish amount of delight, “is that he gets like _a hundred times_ madder over me smuggling you some old t-shirts than he _ever_ was over any of the illegal shit I did. It’s a total win, win. I get to sabotage his bullshit parenting _and_ he can’t arrest me for it.” Nathan had almost kissed him, then. A lot of _almosts_, between the two of them.)

Nathan liked Christmas. He and the Chief usually had quiet ones, after his mother died, but they were still nice. Especially once Nathan was old enough to drink and they’d get tipsy and watch old Christmas Movies._ It’s a Wonderful Life_ was one of the Chief’s favorites. He watched it every year, whether Nathan wanted to or not. There was a kind of comfort to the routine.

It was easier to remember the Chief really did love him, on Christmas.

This year was going to be something different, though. As they carried Nathan’s things into the house, Garland told him they’d be having_ guests_ for Christmas. Some of his old work buddies--good ol’ boy type cops, mostly retired by now. Nathan felt a wave of dread wash through him. He’d never liked the Chief’s friends. Back when they thought he was a girl, their eyes always lingered in ways that made him want to crawl under the table. Garland never seemed to notice, but Nathan hated it when any of them stopped by.

He hadn’t seen any of them since he transitioned, except in passing--when all they were able to do was cast a sneer his direction and make some kind of whispered comment to Garland. Nathan would like to think his father defended him in those moments, but honestly? He doubted it. When it came to the old guard, Garland was a path-of-least-resistance kind of guy.

Garland’s friends didn’t come through until dinner time, which meant Nathan got a fairly normal Christmas up until then, but it also meant he spent the whole day with anxiety gnawing a hole in his stomach.

It wasn’t so terrible, at first. All three of them mostly ignored him for the first half of the meal, choosing instead to reminisce with Garland about the good old days. Nathan stayed quiet, poking at his food, struggling to find any kind of appetite.

Eventually, though, the whole thing went south.

“So you’re still playing at being a boy, huh?” The words cut through him like a knife. Nathan fumbled his fork, staring at the man across the table in shocked silence. The man--Arthur, he thinks it was--didn’t seem to notice or care about Nathan’s reaction, just kept on going, “Thought maybe going off to college would have slapped some sense into you.”

“Nah,” one of the others chimed in, “You seen the way colleges are these days? You send ‘em in smart and normal and you get ‘em back brainwashed and gay.”

Garland, for what it was worth (and it wasn’t worth much), did cut in with a gruff, “I’m sure Nathan doesn’t appreciate the interrogation, boys.” And steered the conversation into another direction. It didn’t stop the disgusted, pitying looks they shot his way, or the snide jabs they’d make at Garland about _raising his… boy right._ One of them—older, broad, retired from the force, now, but the kind who had a _taste _for it, who still misses working the beat--that one kept an eye on him all night, and Nathan felt profoundly unsafe in a way he wasn’t used to anymore.

It’s not that he never felt unsafe at college, but it was often an unfocused kind of fear. Most of the people around him were accepting. Kind. The ones that weren’t usually kept their distance. This, though? Just the way the man _looked _at him made his blood run cold. It was a man who wanted to hurt him. Who _could_.

Nathan excused himself after dinner, in spite of Garland’s protests about missing dessert. Retreating to his room and snatching a bottle of gin on his way up, Nathan pulled one of Duke’s favorite escape tactics--the ol’ Crocker One-Two: one foot out the window, then the other out the window. _Voila_.

He dropped down into the snow and pulled his window closed behind him. There was no way the Chief didn’t hear the rumble of the bronco’s ignition, but Nathan didn’t care if he heard. Didn’t care if the Chief and his old buddies gossiped about him and what he’d become, so long as he didn’t have to be around to see it.

He wound up parked out by the docks on Christmas, drinking straight out of the bottle. He picked it because he figured it’d be empty. Didn’t realize that watching the moonlight on the water would remind him so much of Duke.

So, a little drunk and a lot humiliated (maybe the other way around, actually. Maybe a lot drunk. Definitely a lot drunk), Nathan dialed the number he’d been given for the first time.

** _You’ve reached Duke. Don’t leave a message._ **

See, he didn’t know, yet, that this wasn’t a coincidence—it was a pattern. He didn’t know that Duke was _never _going to answer his calls. _Never _going to return them. No, in this moment, Nathan was just lost and cornered and he missed his best fucking friend.

He babbled into the grainy silence. “I need you, Duke. You were right. Everything’s fucking awful, here. You were right, please come home. I’m sorry, please come home.”

But, of course, he didn’t come home. He didn’t call, either, and Nathan learned the hard way that Duke was just as selfish and unreliable as everyone always said he was. The postcards didn’t prove anything. They were just salt in a very open wound.

* * *

It would be redundant to say it’s just an average day, down at the station. They’re always average days, in Haven. Still, when Nathan wakes up that morning, nothing feels different. He gets dressed, burns his mouth on his coffee, and stumbles out the door with just a little bit of fog still clinging to the inside of his brain. If you’d asked him if anything seemed different, today, he might have mentioned how was too warm for April in Maine. That’s about it.

Two hours into his shift, a wrench gets thrown in the works.

Stan takes a call, scribbles down a few words on a notepad, and wanders over to where Nathan and some of the other officers are standing.

“Harbormaster says there’s a new ship in port,” he says, scanning his notes and sounding disinterested, “Something called the--? Cape Roost? Room?”

All the air disappears from Nathan’s lungs.

“—Rouge?” He asks, voice tight.

“Yeah, I think that’s the one. He said he thought it must be a delivery, since he’s never seen her before, but nobody’s unloading. Asked if we could send somebody over to check it out, make sure it was all above board.”

Duke usually sent postcards, but every so often he sent photographs. One photo, years ago, was of a rusted out old ship with the name **_THE CAPE ROUGE_** painted on the side. On the back Duke had written, _She’s all mine. I’ll take you fishing, sometime._

“I’m on it,” Nathan said, pushing out from behind his desk in a rush.

“You sure?” Stan said, confused. “We can put one of the new guys on it, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“No,” Nathan insists. He grabs his coat on his way out, feeling his heartbeat in his mouth. “I got it.”

Nathan rarely goes to the harbor without a reason. The ships, the docks, the sea—they were Duke’s favorite part of Haven. Only thing he ever really liked about it. Being here just reminds Nathan of everything he lost.

The Rouge looks abandoned when Nathan rounds the corner, but it’s not long before a familiar head of dark hair appears from below deck. Nathan doesn’t even see his face. He doesn’t need to; he’d know Duke Crocker anywhere.

He’d expected to feel conflicted, seeing Duke again. But he doesn’t feel conflicted at all. Every other thing Duke has ever inspired in him—joy, sorrow, comfort, _love_—it all drops away to make room for one thing. Fury.

Storming up the pier, Nathan snarls, “Were you planning on telling me you were back?”

Duke goes visibly stiff for a second before he’s able to hide it. He turns on him with a blank, irritated expression.

“Can I help you, officer?” He singsongs, only for the fake smile to drain off his face in a slow fall. It’d be a lie for Nathan to say he didn’t take a certain amount of satisfaction in that.

“Holy shit,” Duke murmurs, glued to the spot, staring. They spend what feels like an eternity like that—watching each other, Duke’s mouth open in shock, Nathan’s hands balled into fists at his side—before Duke manages a wounded, “Nate.”

“_No_,” The words are out of his mouth before he even thinks about them. _“You_ don’t get to call me that.”

“I’m sorry I left,” Duke says in a rush, hands lifted in surrender. It’s the easiest apology Nathan’s ever gotten out of him, which means it’s also the least satisfying. Nathan’s coiled so tight he can barely keep it together, and Duke must see that because he adds, “And for not returning your calls. Or—coming back.”

“Why _did_ you come back, Duke?”

Duke makes a face and fumbles for a laugh. He rubs the back of his neck and drawls, “I, uh, take it you haven’t been getting my letters.”

“You said you wanted to come home,” Nathan challenges. There’s no softness to it; it’s all sharp edges. He’s proving something—a point, his own righteous anger, Duke’s failure. Whatever it is, it isn’t pretty. “You said you were scared there wouldn’t be anything waiting for you. And then you stayed gone for another _three goddamn years_.”

“I know,” Duke murmurs, something awful just beneath the surface. He gives Nathan this look that’s so goddamn _sad_, it makes Nathan’s stomach turn. He doesn’t want to feel sorry for Duke. He wants to be angry, but Duke is closer than he’s been in a decade and the rage is so hard to hold on to. It’s slipping through his fingers.

“You know,” Nathan echoes, voice flat. “I—” He grinds to a stop, the words stuck in his throat. He won’t say _loved you_. He won’t. Instead, he grits out, “waited for you.”

Duke hops off the deck and onto the pier—close enough to touch. Nathan hates the frightened way he stumbles backward, hates that he couldn’t even stand his ground. But he knows how he is when Duke is this close to him. He doesn’t think straight. He never has.

“Do you wanna go fishing?”

The question comes so far out of left field, it actually shocks Nathan into silence. It takes him a moment to recalibrate and actually process what Duke’s just said. He feels entitled to his indignance when he snarls, “Sorry—do I want to _what_?”

Duke tucks his hands into his pockets, not half as comfortable or calm as he’s trying to pretend to be. The act might work on someone else, but Nathan knows all his tells. He rocks on his heels in a restless way that he wouldn’t—not if he were really as cavalier as he wants Nathan to think he is.

“Fishing.” Duke keeps his voice light. In some ways, he’s so different from the boy who disappeared in the middle of the night, ten years back, and in other ways he’s exactly the same. Nathan isn’t sure if that makes it better or worse. “Take a weekend, catch up. I’ll take you up the coast. We can—talk.”

Nathan crosses his arms. Duke isn’t the only one who can put up a front; Nathan doesn’t hate the idea nearly as much as he wants to. More skeptical than furious, he asks, “You gonna fit ten years into a weekend?”

“Gonna try.”

Nathan laughs. It isn’t a kind sound, exactly, but it isn’t a cruel one either. More shocked than anything. He clicks his teeth, leveling Duke with a look. “You sure you wanna be trapped in a metal box with me for a whole weekend?”

Duke knows him, much as Nathan wishes he didn’t, and he splits into a genuine grin when Nathan finally buckles. “I’ll take my chances.”

* * *

When they were kids, _let’s go fishing_ was usually code for—well, just about anything else. Anything that they wouldn’t want the Chief to overhear them plotting for. Sometimes “going fishing” meant stripping down to their underwear and cannonballing off the pier (even when the spring chill hadn’t left the water, yet.) Sometimes “going fishing” meant finding new and creative ways to steal beer from the local corner store and getting day drunk on a Saturday. Sometimes it just meant driving around, fighting over the radio station and singing at the top of their lungs.

Nathan was transparent. He liked anything that meant he got to spend time with Duke, even the illegal stuff. Hell, he got a special little thrill out of it—knowing that it meant he was defying the law _and _his father in one fell swoop. (If you’d have told him, back then, that he was going to grow up to join the police academy and follow in Garland’s footsteps, he’d have never—in a million years—believed it.)

Duke never roped him into anything _dangerous_. Petty theft, occasionally. A healthy amount of vandalism. A little bit of underaged drinking and more than a little bit of pot smoking. _Harmless _might not have been quite the right word, but—it was fun. Duke was fun. Duke made him feel—

No, that’s the whole sentence. The whole thought. Duke made him feel.

When they weren’t calling him worse things, the kids at school used to call him a robot--especially in the thick of the troubles, when he was just a gangly eight-year-old who felt out of place and unreal enough, already, even _before _going numb. Funny, almost: how the void of his trouble felt so goddamn similar to the way he felt anytime anyone leveled the word _girl _at him.

It never seemed to matter what he did, back then. He was permanently classified as a “good kid.” His teachers used to tell him not to get involved with Duke Crocker. A bad influence, they called him. A lost cause.

They didn’t see that Duke Crocker _was _the cause. He was the banner Nathan tied his colors to.

Nathan had hated him once and he would hate him again, but for a while in the middle (and sometimes even after), Duke was the whole damn world.

They were fourteen when Duke really cemented that fact, for him. He was out, but only to Duke. Not to the kids at school and certainly not to his dad. It was nice having _someone _who knew, but he still felt unsettled--like he was wearing a costume for everyone else’s benefit. But Duke saw him. 

Duke called him _Nathan _in private and stupid nicknames in public, and most of the time, the fear and the fondness in Nathan seemed to cancel each other out.

“Hey! Stringbean!” Called a familiar voice from across the school parking lot. “We walking home or what?”

Any other day and Nathan would have complained about the nickname. Duke was probably counting on it, given the smug grin on his face. But Nathan’s head was somewhere else, and he just tucked his hands into his pockets and fell into step beside Duke.

“Wow, I really struck a nerve, huh?” Duke teased, elbowing Nathan’s ribs. Nathan swatted him away.

“You really didn’t,” he mumbled, staring at the ground.

They were quiet for a few blocks.

“So,” Duke drawled--casual, conversational, easy as anything, “You’re freaked out.”

Nathan sputtered. Nobody else could read him like Duke; it had been true for years, but somehow always seemed to catch him off-guard. “I’m not freaked out.”

Duke laughed. It was mocking, but in a gentle way. “Uh, yeah, _okay_. Whatever you say, chief.”

“Don’t call me chief.”

Duke shot him a grin over his shoulder. “Yeah, you’re right. That sucked.” The smile had finally slipped off his face, though, when Nathan refused to look at him.

The silence hung between them like a weighted rope. Duke acted like he didn’t notice: kept his eyes forward and his posture relaxed--but Nathan? He felt like a blocked pipe slowly building pressure.

Finally, he burst. 

“What if I get sick again?” He asked, voice small.

Now that caught Duke’s attention. He slowed to a stop, turning to look at Nathan with a confused expression. “If you--what?”

Nathan stopped too. He couldn’t bring himself to look Duke in the face--felt pathetic and small, in that moment. Wringing his hands, he thought about how clearly he could feel every moment of it and how much he stood to _lose_. “The--the--fuck, whatever it was called. Idio--? Idiopathic neuropathy. From when we were kids. What if it comes _back_?”

Something in Duke’s expression changed. He crossed his arms and sighed, looking Nathan up and down as though he’d be able to _see _it on him. “It isn’t supposed to, though, right?”

Nathan shook his head helplessly. “That’s the thing--I don’t _know_. The doctors didn’t know what caused it or why it went away. It just _stopped _and--I don’t--what am I supposed to do if it--”

They were out in the open, right in the middle of the street, right in front of anyone and everyone who might (and would) be nosy enough to go looking, and Nathan was on the verge of a goddamn panic attack.

“I can’t _do _that again, Duke. It was fucking _awful_\--it was--it was _nothing_\--”

Duke took him by the shoulders, his grip tight--a little too tight, actually, but that helped. It brought Nathan back to his body, reminded him that it was real and there and could _feel_.

“Nate, slow down. You’re gonna drive yourself crazy worrying about shit that might not even happen.” He made a face; Nathan couldn’t read it. Never was as good with Duke as Duke was with him. “Trust me, I get it.”

Nathan looked away, eyes locked on the concrete, chest tight when he managed the words, “I can’t be--_this _and numb.” He could feel the sting of tears just behind his eyes and he hated it, bit down on it as hard as he could, but he couldn’t keep it out of his voice. Couldn’t hide it from Duke.

Duke’s voice was about as careful as it ever got when he asked, “What do you mean, _this_?”

Nathan shook out of his grip, straightening his shirt and looking anywhere but at Duke. “You know exactly what I mean.”

Duke meant well, in retrospect, when he said, “Hey. Dude. Listen, there isn’t anything wrong with you--”

“I DIDN’T SAY THERE WAS ANYTHING WRONG WITH ME,” Nathan shouted, shocking both of them with the fury of it. He pulled back, instantly: retreated inside himself, pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders. When he spoke again, all that rage had been replaced with exhaustion. “I’m going home, Duke. Just--jesus christ. I’ll take the long way around. I need some space.”

Duke didn’t follow. Didn’t call after him. Duke did, however, knock on his window just a little past midnight with a spray-can in one hand and a pack of paint markers in the other. He was grinning from ear to ear when Nathan slid the window open.

“Wanna go fishing?”

Pretty much all the businesses in historic downtown closed by five, which meant there was absolutely no one around when Duke and Nathan snuck through the streets in the dark. It wouldn’t be the last time Duke convinced him to deface public property, but in this particular case, it WAS the first. (Well, unless you count the time they TPed Mrs. Finch’s house on Halloween when they were ten. In that case, the _second_.) Nathan vibrated with a panicked energy, convinced every sound was someone coming to catch them.

Duke didn’t seem bothered by his anxiety. If anything, he was almost delighted by it. A twig snapped in a bush nearby and Nathan practically levitated off the ground and Duke laughed loud enough that Nathan was convinced he’d wake up the whole neighborhood.

“_Shut up_, Duke,” Nathan hissed, and Duke just grabbed the cuff of his sleeve and dragged him in the direction of the nearest brick building.

Duke shook a can of spray paint in one hand and a couple of the paint pens in another before presenting all three of them to Nathan. “Pick your poison, Wuornos.”

Nathan took one of the pens and Duke made a face like he’d picked the wrong one. “I _guess_,” he taunted, taking the other two for himself. Duke went straight to work, but Nathan regarded the wall like an artist waiting for a muse--an extremely worried, very nervous artist.

Nathan still hadn’t managed to write anything in the time it took Duke to tag “**_FUCK COPS_**” across the wall. He set down the can and pulled out the pen, next, glancing at Nathan.

“Not exactly a spectator sport, Nate,” he nudged.

Nathan felt like his skeleton was trying to vibrate out of his body. “My dad is gonna be so pissed,” he babbled, staring at the still-capped pen in his hand.

Duke rolled his eyes at him. “He’s not gonna know it was you.”

“He knows my handwriting!” Nathan snarled in a too-loud whisper.

“_Then don't do it your handwriting, dumbass_,” Duke stage-whispered right back, making a face at him.

Duke turned back to his own art work, scrawling a smaller and clearly smug, “**_can’t prove it was me, chief_**” underneath “**_FUCK COPS_**”.

“What do I write?” Nathan asked softly, feeling like a loose livewire--all anxiety and sparks.

“Oh my god, you’re impossible,” Duke laughed. “It’s not your magnum fucking opus.”

“Dick,” Nathan snapped, but he finally--shaking hands and all--managed to scribble "**_SCREW THIS TOWN_**" in the space beside Duke’s much grander tag. He stared at it for a second before babbling a quiet, “Holy shit, I did it.”

Nathan whipped around to look at Duke, wide-eyed shock on his face, bouncing back and forth on his feet. “Oh shit, oh shit, I did it!” He laughed, only to bounce out of glee and into a kind of free-fall panic. “_Oh my god, I can't believe I did that_.”

Duke let out a delighted cackle and shoved his shoulders, cheering, “Fuck yeah, you did! You feel _that_? Scared? _Excited_?” He punched Nathan’s arm. “_Nobody _can take that from you.”

It dawned on him, then, what they were doing here--the point Duke was trying to prove. He felt his heart jump up into his mouth, so happy and so grateful, in that moment, he could have cried. He didn’t cry, though. He laughed, loud and electric. He wrapped his arms around Duke’s neck and even with all the adrenaline fueling his system, he felt less _afraid _than he had in days.

* * *

Turns out “let’s go fishing” still doesn’t really mean _fishing._

They haven’t spent their time fishing so much as they’ve spent it putting back beers and filling in gaps. Duke hits the highlights of ten years of traveling the world. He skirts around what _exactly _his job actually is. The cop in Nathan knows to be suspicious, but the old love-struck teen just feels a little, vicarious thrill. Nathan talks about college, his father, joining the force and finally feeling like he was doing something good for this town.

“I don’t get it,” Duke says, but it’s gentle. He’s wearing this fond look that Nathan doesn’t let himself linger on. “All the shit this place put you through and you decided to protect it?”

Nathan feels exposed. He leans against Duke’s kitchen counter, taking a drag off his beer and turning away. “Well,” he mumbles, “we can’t all sail off into the sunset.”

Duke lets out a soft sigh but doesn’t rise to the bait. An uncomfortable quiet settles between them until Duke breaks it with a soft, “You look good, Nate. How, uh? How do you feel?”

The question catches him so off-guard, he forgets to be withholding. “Good,” he admits, honest. “Like myself.” When he dares to steal a glance at Duke, he finds him smiling so wide, it barely fits on his face.

“Good,” Duke echoes, biting down on his goofy grin. “That’s—I’m _really _happy for you, Nathan.”

Nathan picks at the label on his beer; anything to keep his hands busy, to give him somewhere else to look. He’s awkward, if genuine, when he mumbles a stilted, “Thank you, by the way. For, uh—I don’t know. Treating me like I was normal. When we were kids.”

He only looks up because he can see Duke shaking his head out of the corner of his eye. It’s Duke’s turn to avoid eye contact, and Nathan watches him stare at the far wall when he says, “Don’t—thank me for that. That was… the bare minimum. And I fucked up plenty of other shit.”

Nathan concedes with a nod. They both fucked up a lot of things, if they’re being honest. He follows Duke’s gaze to the far wall, looking out the porthole at the blue of the water around them. His voice is hardly more than a whisper when he says, “You did a lot more than the bare minimum, Duke.”

For a moment, everything is still. Nathan feels okay in a way he hasn’t in a very long time.

He isn’t looking when Duke’s hands find his face. Isn’t looking when he’s turned into a kiss he never saw coming. It’s shy and needy and important: the way Duke crowds him up against the counter but kisses closed-mouthed and innocent. Nathan doesn’t mean to make that shocked little sound into it, but he can’t stop himself.

“Duke—” He gasps, but he doesn’t pull away, and Duke just whispers a litany of_ I'm sorry'_s against his lips and keeps kissing him.

Once, a long time ago, Nathan used to think he was too boyish for Duke to be interested. A few years later, and he thought he wasn’t boy _enough_. Growing up had always been this balancing act between who he was allowed to be and who he was underneath it. It only just occurs to him how thoroughly Duke has always made him feel seen—even during the times Nathan’s fucking hated him.

Nathan forces himself to pull back; he braces a hand on Duke’s chest—and it’s as much to keep _himself _from sinking back into the kiss as to stop Duke. “This doesn’t fix it,” Nathan urges, breathless.

One of Duke’s hands lifts to cover Nathan’s on his chest and he closes his eyes, breathing slowly. Nathan watches him with an intensity that borders on a kind of voyeurism.

“I know,” Duke says, squeezing Nathan’s fingers.

Nathan’s voice comes out sounding tight and he hates himself for not being able to hide it. He grips Duke’s shirt and sighs, “Ten years is a _long _time, Duke.”

“Thought about you every day.”

When Nathan had put out his hands, between them, it was supposed to keep Duke at arm’s length, but somehow they’ve drifted together, again. Duke whispers the words up against Nathan’s temple and Nathan hates how he leans into it, but not enough to stop.

“I think,” Nathan murmurs, “that that makes it worse.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

Nathan kisses him, this time, and Duke tips into it like a flower to the sun. There’s something surreal about it: the way Duke Crocker buckles and gives for him. There are a thousand reasons why they shouldn’t do this, a million things still unsaid, all these old hurts he doesn’t know how to put down. None of it matters with Duke so close to him.

Nathan has imagined kissing Duke more often than he’d liked to admit. He always expected Duke would be pushy, intense, overly forward. He never thought it would be like this. He never thought he’d be the one with his hands on Duke’s hips, licking into his mouth, making him moan. Duke’s breathless when he sighs Nathan’s name into the kiss and pushes his hands into his hair.

Duke’s devastatingly pliant when Nathan backs him up against the counter. He arches into Nathan’s hands when they push underneath his shirt. Duke touches him like he’s something sacred, something gorgeous, and Nathan’s struck with the realization that Duke would probably give him anything he asked for, in this moment. Anything at all.

It’s a shame it’s ten years too late.

“Stop,” Nathan gasps, reality hitting him all at once. He stumbles backwards. “Stop, we can’t—I _hated _you, yesterday.”

Duke looks like he’s been struck—looks a little debauched, actually, although that’s unrelated—and Nathan regrets the words almost immediately, even if they aren’t, strictly speaking, untrue.

“Wait, no, that’s not what I mean,” he pushes. It’s hard to get his thoughts together when Duke’s looking at him like _that _(when Duke _looks _like that: pink mouthed and flushed and flustered). “I—want to trust you. But I don’t. Not yet. And you…” He lets out a flat, almost tormented laugh. “You mess with my head. I don’t make good choices around you.”

“By all means,” Duke rasps, his voice cracked down the center. His attempt at putting up an unaffected front falls flat. “Don’t spare my feelings.”

“Don’t do that,” Nathan sighs, exhausted in a way that feels heavy—like being slowly filled with concrete. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

_Here_. It’s like the word unlocks something in Duke and his whole expression changes. “Yeah,” he agrees. He leans back against the counter and lets out a frustrated sigh, running a hand through his hair. “Fuck. I should have come back. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

“I do,” Nathan murmurs. He crosses his arms and tips his head back to stare at the ceiling, trying not to think too hard about the words about to leave his mouth. “You hated this town more than you—” _Loved me._ He can’t say it. He can’t. But the gutted look on Duke’s face tells him he doesn’t have to.

“I was an idiot,” Duke says, his voice low.

“Was?” Nathan redirects, humor coloring his voice. He can’t stand the direction the conversation’s careening towards, so he pulls a move from the Duke Crocker book of tricks and cracks a joke, instead.

“Hey,” Duke whispers, something warm underneath the hurt, “I’m here, aren’t I?” It makes Nathan smile, hearing his own words echoed back at him.

“Yeah, Duke. You are.”

\--

It’s not until later, when he’s driving his fist into Duke’s face and he realizes it doesn’t hurt—that nothing hurts, nothing feels like anything—that the irony of it all really hits him.


End file.
